According to Pausanias (in Book III of his Description of Greece), Laconia's first king was a man named Lelex. His son (or grandson according to the authors) Eurotas drains the marshy plain and gives his name to the river that flows from it. Having no male heir, he left his kingdom to Lacedaemon, son of Zeus and Taygetus (who gave his name to the mountain overlooking Sparta), husband of his daughter Sparta. Upon acceding to the throne, Lacedaemon gives his name to the region he governs, and that of his wife to the city itself, hence the name "Sparta". Following his example, one of his sons, Amyclas, founded the town of Amyclées.
A grandson of Amyclas, Oebale, married Gorgophone, daughter of Perseus. His son, Tyndareus, sees his throne challenged. Forced to flee to Messenia, he is restored to the throne by Heracles. The kingship then passes to his sons, then to Menelaus, his son-in-law. Here we join The Iliad, where Sparta plays an important role, since it is Menelaus who is the husband flouted by Helen, his wife, and the Trojan prince Paris. In the Catalog of Vessels, in canto II of the poem, appears “Lacedaemon and its deep valleys” (II, 581). Nine villages are mentioned in the region:in order, Pharis, Sparta strictly speaking, Brysées, Augées, Messe, Amyclées, Hélos, Laas and Oetyle. Menelaus brings 60 naves, a significant number but less than the 100 of Agamemnon, the 90 of Nestor and the 80 of Diomedes. In Canto IV, Sparta is mentioned among the three cities that are "dear among all" to Hera, along with Argos and Mycenae.
Menelaus is succeeded by Orestes, his son-in-law. He is a descendant of Orestes, Aristodemus, who has the two twins Eurysthenes and Procles, at the origin of the royal families of Sparta following an oracle of the Pythia. Another tradition makes them Heraclides. Aristodemus dies at Naupacte before the return of the Dorians to the Peloponnese (known as the "return of the Heraclides").
Archaic period
The city was founded after the conquest of the plain of Messenia (see Wars of Messenia) by the inhabitants of the neighboring plain of Laconia between 730 and 710 BC. AD After the Achaean period, Sparta became a Dorian city. According to legend, there was only one great Dorian invasion, led by Aristodemus, 80 years after the fall of Troy. In reality, there was undoubtedly a series of successive small incursions. Dorian Sparta did not immediately become the great city we know. It is undermined by internal dissension. The reforms of Lycurgus in the 7th century are a real turning point for the city:from now on, everything is done to strengthen the military power of the city, and Sparta becomes the hoplitic city par excellence.
Sparta submits the whole of Laconia:it begins by reducing the entire Eurotas plain, then it pushes back the Argives and secures the entire region. The second stage consists of the annexation of Messenia. At this time, Sparta is the most powerful city in the region, only Arcadia and Argos can stand up to it. From the middle of the 6th century, Sparta submitted the Arcadian cities, then Argos. (Unequal) alliances are made with neighboring cities.
In 506, Cleomenes I used these alliances to mount an expedition which united, according to Herodotus (V, 74), “all the Peloponnese”. On this occasion the first crisis takes place:Cleomenes has assembled the army without indicating its purpose, neither geographical nor political. This is not exceptional, but when, at Eleusis, the Corinthians realize that it is a question of marching on Athens and overthrowing the Pisistratids, they turn back, followed by the other king, Demaratus . This is the famous “Eleusinian Divorce” (see below). To avoid repeating such a discomfiture, Sparta then convened a congress of allies, probably in 505, to discuss a new intervention in Athens, this time to restore Hippias. Faced with the opposition of the allies, Sparta gives up. We can date from this congress the formal birth of the Peloponnesian League.
With its league and its powerful army, Sparta found itself without rival in the Peloponnese at the beginning of the 5th century.